OKLAHOMA CITY – Talent, a break or two, passion, and a drive to turn weaknesses into strengths are hallmarks of a successful career, and that recipe has been part of Makayla Messaris' life for a while.
 
Messaris, a senior acting major and a member of Oklahoma City University's competitive pom and dance team, has ambitions of getting an agent after college and going after the bright lights.
 
"My plan is to move to New York City," Messaris said. "I'm hoping either to stay in New York City and book off-Broadway or Broadway shows or go on a national tour."
 
Maybe those sound like little girl dreams to many people, but Messaris is already gathering the ingredients for that magical recipe.
 
Starting Young
 
To be sure, the 'little girl dreams' started when Messaris was a little girl. Her mother was her dance teacher, going to work with Makayla in tow.
 
"Throughout my whole childhood, my mom was my dance teacher," said Messaris. "My whole life, I kind of just thought I would be dancing, and I would be going to school for dancing and make a career out of that."
 
It was her mother who saw that Makayla would need to bloom in other areas to achieve her dreams.
 
"My mom (Erin) put us in dance classes as soon as we could walk, because it was her work, so she would just bring us to work with her," Messaris said. "And we got really into it; me and my sister (Makenna). And then as I got older, she saw that maybe I wasn't the ballet dancer she hoped I would be, and that I wanted to go more into the musical theater, dance, and commercial dance. She ultimately pushed me to like, 'okay, you need to get better at these other things as well.'"
 
Unlike many young girls, Messaris realized that a career in dance wasn't just going to happen on its own. She began to investigate what it would take to make the little girl's dream a reality.
 
"As I got older, I saw the industry I wanted to be in getting more competitive," she said. "And suddenly, the dancing that I wanted to do, you had to sing and you had to act, and you had to basically be a trick pony to be in the industry. So, I decided my senior year that I was going to go to school for something that I wasn't as trained in. I had been heavily trained in the voice department and in the dance department, and so I decided to go to school for acting."
 
To make sure Makayla could get where she needed to go, her parents, Jerry and Erin, encouraged her to hone her craft.
 
"They both were very, very supportive to send me to school for something that they knew would better me," Messaris said.
 
On to OCU
 
Acting wasn't part of the repertoire for the younger Messaris, so the direction she was taking would require stepping into the unknown. And what a huge step it was – leaving her home in Florida for the middle of Oklahoma.
 
The first instinct when checking out OCU was to find a dance application online.
 
"When I was first applying to OCU, I couldn't find the dance application," Messaris said. "My mom recommended it to me for dance, and I was like, 'Wow, would I want to go to Oklahoma? I couldn't find the dance application, and I stumbled upon the acting application."
 
Messaris thought about needing to take on acting and decided to apply and she got a call back that wasn't what she was expecting.
 
"I got a call back, and I figured my call back would be submitting more monologues. And then when I got on our Zoom call and they hadn't sent me anything to prepare, I kind of felt I was like, this is going to go badly. My callback was just an interview like this with the head of the department, and he absolutely sold me on the program. He was so personable and spoke so highly of everybody within the program that I couldn't imagine going anywhere else."
 
Messaris said the callback experience set the tone. She discovered the people at OCU weren't all about themselves and that they cared as much about how she would fit in on campus as her ability to succeed.
 
"I think everybody I've met at OCU really wants that personal connection with you," Messais said. "Other schools, I found that I would just do the audition and leave, and they wouldn't know anything about me as a person."
 
Pom
 
Joining OCU's competitive pom and dance squad was almost a happy accident. After deciding to come on a visit prior to moving in, she took a tour of the campus. Her guide noticed her dancer's posture and asked if she was on the dance team.
 
Her guide convinced her to send an audition tape to OCU head coach Tasha Hinex, and that led to her becoming part of the team.
 
While success immediately followed, it was an interesting new world for Messaris.
 
"I didn't even know that pom was an official sport," said Messaris. "I didn't know that it had a coach. I went on Instagram and I submitted an audition video, and then I got an email from Tasha. I literally thought she was a student until I got here. I thought it was just like some club that I'm going to join to keep up with my dancing ability. And it was so much more than that. And I'm glad it was so much more than that."
 
Messaris has led the Stars to three NDA National Championships and earned 2023 NAIA Dancer of the Year accolades. She's also excelled in the classroom, gathering Scholar Athlete awards.
 
Acting on a Dream
 
You might never know that acting wasn't Messaris' first love. She said the environment at OCU made a huge difference.
"I love it," said Messaris, "It definitely was intimidating going to school for something that isn't like my valued skill, but I think it was definitely worth it. And it helped me get so much better and be a more well-rounded artist altogether. So, I feel more confident going into any room I'm called into, which is exciting."
 
The faculty has been a big part of that, she said.
"I think currently, my biggest inspirations are just my professors," said Messairs. "They have been so nurturing towards me in this journey. They've all become aware that this is something that I felt insecure about and made sure I knew that it was a safe place to explore and to really mess up huge so that they could help me. They've been so supportive throughout the process."
 
On Stage
 
Messaris is coming off a summer of acting at Music Theatre Wichita. She was in "Waitress," "Crazy for You," and her personal favorite, "Newsies."
 
The summer program allowed her to be an understudy in "Waitress" to Broadway talent Kennedy Caughell, and she also learned from Ben Fankhauser, who played Davey in the Original Broadway production of Newsies.
 
"They do five shows every summer and their ensemble is all college students," said Messaris of Music Theatre Wichita. "All of their leads are Broadway actors. And so the ensemble understudies the Broadway actors. So we get more one-on-one time with those Broadway actors to hone our craft and learn about the industry and learn from somebody who's actually in the business right now, which is super cool."
 
The mentoring and communication have continued.
 
"I've met people whom I've looked up to for so many years that it almost just feels surreal," said Messaris. "I send them texts now, and I can't believe my life is real."
 
Newsies gave Messaris a chance to just enjoy her love of dancing.
 
"I've been waiting to do Newsies basically my whole life," she said. "It's like a dancer's dream show. I got to flip and turn like no other. It's basically just a dance show. It's a musical and there's so much singing, but the dancing in that show is so much more hard-core than any other Broadway show I've ever seen."
She also shared her talent locally at OCU. She played Cordelia in "King Lear." She also participates in the student choreography show.
 
Staying Grounded
 
While her parents have shaped and encouraged her talent, and professors and experience have helped her hone her skills, Messaris credits her sister, Makenna, for keeping her grounded.
 
"She danced all through high school and is now teaching the next generation of dancers," Makayla said. "She is always sort of an escape for me, because I come here every morning and I dance, and then I go act all day, every day. And so all of my friends are kind of doing the same things as I am, and she is doing something completely different.
 
"And so when I get to talk to her, and she's just cooking dinner in the kitchen, and I'm stressed about monologues, she'll say, 'You know, it's just words.' She offers a new perspective on it. When I'm really stressed about something artistic, she'll say, "It's okay. No one is going to die if your voice cracks or if you don't point your foot."
Makayla said Mackenna brings it all back to earth.
 
"She tries to get my mind off the arts and reminds me that I'm an actual person."
 
Making a Difference
 
While a big part of performing is self-expression, Messaris understands that the audience is made up of real people, too.
"I think, personally, my favorite part about performing is knowing that it is for the audience," Messaris said. "I'm either an escape from whatever is going on in their life, their day job, if something's wrong, like I'm an escape from that. Or I'm teaching them something and helping them work through those hard times. Because people really are coming to the theater for an enjoyable night. Or if you're an artist, you're coming to learn from other artists.
 
"I think a lot of people who are coming for just an escape end up learning something from it. They didn't necessarily come into it knowing that they needed to learn a lesson about something, but we give them that anyway, and they leave a better person because of it. And I think that's really valuable, especially because people don't realize that the stories that we're telling actually mean something."
 
That purpose makes the work easier to complete.
 
"I still obviously have so much fun doing it, but it's hard to put so much work into something for just the fun aspect," she said. "Especially like coming to school and working on straight plays instead of musicals. Those straight plays really dig more into those deeper topics. And you're playing characters that are not fun, you're playing characters that you're going through all of their ugly trauma too. You have to find some purpose. I found purpose in doing it because I feel like their story needs to be told, and people need to learn from either the bad decisions that they made or the bad things that had happened to that character."
 
Coming Up Next…
 
In between graduation and Broadway, Messaris said she is ready for the path forward.
 
"I'm open to cruises and doing more regional shows – pretty much whatever finds me and lets me do what I love to do," she said. "That is hard in this industry, but I am open and flexible."
 
"And then hopefully just finding peace wherever I am and growing from there."